


[and i'm home]

by Feather (lalaietha)



Series: [to see you there] [15]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Barton-Romanoff European Murder Tour, F/M, Post-Winter Soldier, murderfacing across Europe
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-02-18
Updated: 2015-02-18
Packaged: 2018-03-13 13:18:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,081
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3382967
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lalaietha/pseuds/Feather
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>They leave three bodies in Provence and three more in Rome, two in Athens and then six in Istanbul. None of them show up earlier than about the sixth day in any given place, and all of them try for ambush in places they can't be seen.</p>
            </blockquote>





	[and i'm home]

**Author's Note:**

> . . . it's LIKE fluff?

The pragmatic advantage of the Insight mess is, Pierce'd pulled basically all his elites to DC to cut through the SHIELD-loyal and deal with Rogers and Nat, which means that for the most part what's left out there as far as skill at sudden and creative violence goes is mostly the second tier. And being hunted by the second tier _is_ a vacation. 

They leave three bodies in Provence and three more in Rome, two in Athens and then six in Istanbul. None of them show up earlier than about the sixth day in any given place, and all of them try for ambush in places they can't be seen. 

"The problem's the fucking second tier of suits, you know," Clint says, matter of fact, as he changes his shirt and tosses the old one in the bucket of oxygen bleach Tasha filled, on top of her clothes and their assailants'. "Like right now we're the worst hit on the planet, none of the freelancers are gonna take a contract on us, so whatever, but you know Pierce had like a dozen project-managers out there just waiting for him to stumble so they could et tu his Brute and they're the ones with money, something approaching brains, and at least the younger ones have time." 

"Firstly," Nat says, from her crouch where she's filling a spray-bottle with oxygen bleach, "never, ever use use Latin like that again. Secondly, we can burn that bridge when it attacks us. Just enjoy the mental image about how much shit is being lost in the upper echelons of the NSA and the CIA while you can." 

"Oh I am," Clint replies, as she comprehensively spritzes the bodies, wipes them down, dumps the rag in the oxygen bleach and then kicks them both off the rough pier. "Believe me. Almost as much as I'm enjoying the fact that My Favourite Senator and Congressbastard are _both_ sitting in federal prison for treason, for as long as they survive." 

She strips off the latex gloves, dumps them inside out in the bleach bucket and pushes them under with a finger. "You want to torch the car or should I?" 

Clint makes a courtly gesture towards where they left the ancient, battered Mini. "Please," he says, "indulge in pyromania." 

 

The car gets blamed on "youth unrest" and there's never any mention of finding the bodies that Clint hears about, and his estimation of law enforcement in that particular part of Italy drops a few more notches. 

 

In Switzerland - where on the downside everyone and their cat still smokes like chimneys, but on the upside the hotel above Lucerne they decide to stop in for a while has featherbeds, feather pillows and next-door-to-a-dairy fresh milk - Clint says, "So did _anyone_ get around to telling the powers that be that Thor basically moved to London after the whole what-the-fuck-since-when-do-we-live-in-a-fantasy-novel dark-elf thing?" 

"I told Nick," Natasha says, leaning back against the pile of pillows, and then smiling sardonically. "I don't think he ever got around to letting Director Fury know." 

Clint considers that for a while. He's finding it best to handle the whole "we nearly got massacred by holdover-Nazis with DNA-tracking bullshit airships straight out of _Star Wars_ " thing in pieces, one bit at a time, which has the added benefit of letting Nat process those bits and disconnected pieces with him. He feels bad for former SHIELD people who don't have his coping mechanisms: he's never actually been deluded about his overall impact on or control over the universe in all its soul-destroying enormity and chaos, so it doesn't take him long to look over the past dozen years or so and determine that actually, if he he'd had the opportunity to figure it out, he'd've a) done so and b) died quickly after. 

Once upon a time somebody for whom Clint will bend his strict agnosticism and hope that some version of eternal torment is real taught Tasha that the entire universe of importance rests on her shoulders, so she's got a harder time with that. 

"So they didn't know they'd get a Hulk in the face, and they didn't know the sort-of-god-of-thunder and - more importantly - prince of a starfaring empire who frankly could wipe us off the face of the galaxy without thinking was hanging around across the Atlantic and undoubtedly watching the news," he muses. "And, you know. The Insight helicarriers were still reliant on electricity." 

Tasha gives him an amused look. "We'd still be dead," she points out. 

"Yeah," Clint replies, "but they'd be _fucked_. I mean they just killed Elizabeth Ross. Thor even showing up would basically be overkill, and he would totally show up, and over-kill." 

At that point room-service brings them ridiculously rich hot chocolate because when you're a Swiss hotel right next door to a dairy not having ridiculous hot chocolate would be the worst kind of waste humankind could contemplate, and Tasha gets up to get it and comes back to sit on the bed, handing him his. "You're wrong in the head," she tells him. 

"Look," he says, "I'm completely happy with drawing comfort from the fact that my enemies would have suffered agonizing defeat, humiliation and heartbreak even if they'd quote-unquote-won. I am a man of simple pleasures and hypothetical Pyrrhic schadenfreude happens to be one of them." 

"I don't think anything that you need to mix Greek and German to even talk about counts as simple," Nat informs him. "Drink your hot chocolate, stop contemplating the many worlds' b-s and find the travel chess, Barton." 

 

At about midnight, with both of them pretending to sleep because they've _both_ taken this merry-go-round enough to know that as long as you're not tossing and turning dozing is at least better than being up, Clint says, "I'm sorry I was in Afghanistan." 

Tasha's curled up on her side, her back to him and his arm around her waist. After a beat or two she says, in Russian, "If you're expressing regret, I am too. If you're apologizing for an assignment I know you didn't want but couldn't work with anyone else, that you swore about for two weeks and told Fury he was an asshole to his face over, you're an idiot, and I'm going to turn over and hit you." 

Clint feels himself half-smile. "Definitely regret," he says, also in Russian. 

"Oh good," she says, in the voice that says she doesn't even remotely believe him. "Then I'm sorry too."


End file.
